The call came in the early evening

and my brother-in-law, on the other end said,
"I don't think she's going to make it
through the night".
My wife and I jumped in the car,
looking for the unfamiliar hospital
the assisted living home had sent her to,
grimly resolved to get there
before the final curtain call ended.
We found her in a room ghastly
with fluoresecent light, hooked up to
a host of devices trying to save her
from the endgame the pneumonia and
the heart disease were playing with her
to the point of checkmate.
I couldn't tell if she was still aware of
anything any more; her eyes were closed
and there was no hint left of consciousness.
We consented to more morphine, just to be sure
she was being eased out as gently as possible.
Whatever had to be said, had to be said now.
Unexpectedly, a lifetime had to be distilled
and expressed in words that could only fall short.
The final reassurances that God would now
take her into his arms;
the last thank-yous for all she had done,
said in breaking voice;
the final expressions of love
said both out of affection
and as a way of paving a road with
tender words
to accompany the journey to the light.
My sister, who had ministered at many
such bedsides, said, "They're there one minute,
and then they're not." A few minutes
after midnight, the gauges all
went to zero, and it seemed as if all the
air suddenly left the unconscious body
before us. "They're there one minute,
and then they're not", my sister repeated,
as grief took hold of her.
The kind and sensitive nurse,
who had seen many of these departures,
sent for a physician to make the call as
we sat, disoriented. The young intern arrived
some time later, and made the formal
pronouncement. (Perhaps his first ever.)
We left for a sleepless night, and my
sister took the burden of the arrangements.
My brother-in-law later said when you
remembered as an adult, you could accept it;
but when you remembered as a child,
that's when the tears came.
He was right.
The earth has gone around the sun ten times
since that night when my sister, my devoted wife, and I
said a final prayer at her bedside.
The road had been hard for her,
but she had survived long enough
to claim a small piece of this world as
hers, and hers alone.
Her virtues ultimately overshadowed
her faults,
and in the end her decency, her kindness,
and the example of bravery she left,
are the images and echoes
that will never fade.
And part of me will always be
that little boy
watching her make a cake
as the yellow sunlight
comes through the front window.